"I don't know. It was turned over to Inspector Bale...."
"When do the royal parties arrive for the Emperor Ball?" I asked.
"They are already in the city," Barbro said, "at Drottningholm."
I felt my heart start to beat a little faster. Bale wouldn't let this opportunity pass. With the three kings here in the city, and an atomic bomb hidden somewhere, he had to act. At one stroke he could wipe out the leadership of the Imperium, and follow-up with a full-scale assault; and against his atomic weapons, the fight would be hopeless.
"Call Manfred, Barbro," I said. "Tell him that bomb's got to be found fast. The kings will have to be evacuated from the city; the ball will have to be cancelled...."
Barbro spoke into the phone, looked back at me. "He has left the building, Brion," she said. "Shall I try to reach Herr Goering?"
"Yes," I said. I started to tell her to hurry, but she was already speaking rapidly to someone at Goering's office. Barbro was quick to catch on.
"He also is out," Barbro said. "Is there anyone else?"
I thought furiously. Manfred or Hermann would listen to anything I might say, but with their staffs it would be a different matter. To call off the day of celebration, disturb the royal parties, alarm the city, were serious measures. No one would act on my vague suspicions alone. I had to find my friends in a hurry—or find Bale.
Imperial Intelligence had made a search, found nothing. His apartment was deserted, as well as his small house at the edge of the city. And the monitors had detected no shuttle not known to be an Imperium vessel moving in the Net recently.